Yasser ElKady, Minister of Communications and Information Technology in Egypt has rounded off a series of meetings with corporates and global bodies at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona during which he lobbied for support for his country's ICT sector.

ElKady has been at the helm of the ministry for over two years. He participated in a ministerial session on "Connecting the world towards a comprehensive, secure and stable digital future" where he shared some of his country's recent achievements.

"The most important developments in Egypt for the ICT field in recent years include that Egypt ranked 14th in the Global Cybersecurity Index (GCI), and the Egyptian technology services exports increased from 1.79 billion dollars to 3.26 billion dollars in 2017. In addition, Gartner listed Egypt as a key destination for the export of technology services, and Forbes magazine report stated that Cairo is one of the best cities to host start-ups."

ElKady expressed Egypt's interest in electronic manufacturing and the use of modern technological applications such as IOT and Artificial Intelligence (AI) - as well as the establishment of smart cities - as ways to build on the country's progress.

According to Egypt's ICT ministry ElKady met with ICANN Chairman and CEO Goran Marby during MWC 2018 where he shared the results of ongoing cooperation between the country's National Telecom Regulatory Authority (NTRA) and ICANN.

The two organisations established a DNS Entrepreneurship Centre in 2015 to develop the domain name industry in Africa and the Middle East, and improve infrastructure within the domain name industry in Egypt.

ElKady also met with Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Houlin Zhao, CEO of Qualcomm in MENA Jay Sirag and CEO of Huawei in North Africa Liu Wenjun.

The ITU's 2017 ICT Development Index, which compares 175 countries, placed Egypt in the 103rd spot globally and in 5th place among African countries, behind Mauritius, Seychelles and South Africa, who make up the top three.

The World Economic Forum's (WEF) Global Competitiveness Report for the year 2016 to 2017 placed Egypt in 106th place out of 138 countries.